Israel’s “de facto annexation” of the West Bank has been met with a relatively mild EU rebuke, indicating business as usual. 

A slew of new Israeli laws helping Jewish settlers to buy Palestinian land, approved by the Israeli security cabinet on Sunday (8 February), was “entrenching Israeli sovereignty on the ground, de facto”, said the pro-settler Yesha Council on Monday. 

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said it would “enable accelerated development of settlement on the ground”.

Smotrich also pledged to “continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The pro-two state Israeli NGO Peace Now called the legal change “a de facto annexation”.

Eight majority-Muslim states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also called it “illegal annexation”, and “condemned [the move] in the strongest terms“.

But for his part, an EU Commission spokesman said on Monday in Brussels only that the EU “condemned” the step, which went “in the wrong direction”. 

He also said draft EU sanctions on Israel, proposed by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen last September, remained “on the table”. 

Sunday’s new Israeli laws will expedite settler land-purchases, extend Israeli administrative control into parts of the West Bank (so called ‘Areas A and B’), and give Israel powers to change the status of disputed religious sites, such as The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron — the most populous town in the West Bank. 

Three tiers of ‘condemnation’

In EU diplomatic jargon, the bloc “condemns” foreign actions, “strongly condemns” them, or “condemns in the strongest possible terms” (as it did Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022). 

And its use of the mildest version on Monday indicated there will be no follow-up action, as there was on Russia in 2022. 

Von der Leyen’s draft sanctions had envisaged suspending an EU-Israel trade-perk agreement (worth billions of euros) and blacklisting Smotrich and Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (who made genocidal remarks in the Gaza war). 

The sanctions were “put on the shelf” after a US-brokered ceasefire on 10 October and have never been discussed since in the EU Council, diplomats said. 

Israeli arms firms, such as Rafael, and the Israeli defence ministry remain eligible for the EU’s ‘Horizon’ science-programme grants despite their storied role in Gaza atrocities, for instance, the EU Commission previously confirmed to EUobserver. 

And the only counter-measure the EU ever adopted was freezing €14m of bilateral payments for Israeli cultural projects, excluding grants for the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. 

De jure annexation of the West Bank would go against a promise by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s to his main ally on the world stage, US president Donald Trump. 

But ‘de facto annexation’ has been creeping forward since 1967, when Israel conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War.

The settler population in the West Bank grew by some 6,000 a year in the 1980s and 15,500 a year in the past 20 years, to reach over 500,000 today, while a further 230,000 settlers have come to live in East Jerusalem . 

Israel has also started construction of settlements in the ‘E1’ area in the West Bank, which would cut the territory in two, despite repeated EU appeals. 

Israeli settler attacks and military raids to displace Palestinian farmers have intensified this year, according to a UN flash report. 

Meanwhile, Israel killed four what it called “terrorists” in Rafah, Gaza, on Monday — bringing the post-ceasefire death toll to 581 and the total to 72,032, according to the Hamas health ministry, which is pulling hundreds of previously uncounted bodies from rubble. 

Gaza still effectively sealed-off

The EU Commission spokesman also said on Monday the humanitarian situation in Gaza remained “dire”. 

Some 22,000 people in Rafah are awaiting medical evacuation to Egypt via an Israeli and EU-controlled crossing point, but Israel let out just 91 patients since it reopened the Rafah gate on 2 February, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency on the ground. 

International media are still forbidden from entering Gaza.

Von der Leyen’s proposed trade sanctions could be adopted by a qualified majority of EU countries, but Germany and Italy were among those who blocked them, even at the height of the Gaza war. 

Blacklisting Smotrich and Ben-Gvir would require unanimity, but the Czech Republic and Hungary have long vowed to veto such a step.